Future Intel CPUs to get DRAM cache?

TG Daily reports Intel has developed very small DRAM memory cells that may eventually replace the more expensive and complex SRAM cells on its processors. Intel researchers have developed DRAM memory cells without capacitors that take up only two capacitors and the firm says this memory offers a bandwidth of 128GB/s at 2GHz!

SRAM has some advantages over DRAM, including lower power consumption, higher speed and no need to be refreshed. However, SRAM is known to be much more expensive than DRAM and not as dense.

Intel said that it was able to fine tune its DRAM design and hit a physical clock of 2 GHz using a 65 nm manufacturing process. The resulting 2T-DRAM offers a stunning bandwidth of 128 GB/s. If Intel is successful to take the clock speed up to the level of its QX9770/9775 processors, the bandwidth would climb to 204.8 GB/s. In other words: Intel would gain more than a 10x improvement over its current L2 cache technology. More importantly: This approach would completely change the programming model since there are no longer any concerns over cache misses.

The scientists believe they will be able to use 45 nm High-k technology to match and exceed Intel's existing clock speed design. And as a next step, DRAM cells are planned to be stacked into Intel's Terascale processors. The Terascale processor itself may be seeing a migration to a massive number of x86 mini-cores – which, sooner or later, may reveal the successor of the architectures of Larrabee and Itanium. In case you are wondering: Yes, it looks like there will be a combination of a CPU and the upcoming GPU/accelerator.